{ "id": "epapxw6eb7", "slug": "the-letter-1940-film", "title": "The Letter (1940 film)", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films", "label": "Film noir and neo-noir films", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films.yr-1940-1975", "label": "Released 1940 to 1975", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films.yr-1940-1975" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "United States · 1800 to 1945: Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "path": [ { "id": "geo.us", "label": "United States", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800", "label": "United States · 1800 to 1945", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t1800.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" } ] } ], "excerpt": "The Letter (1940) is William Wyler's Warner Bros. drama starring Bette Davis as Leslie Crosbie, a planter's wife who kills her lover; seven Oscar nominations, Maugham adaptation, PCA-forced ending change.", "snippet": "The Letter (1940) is William Wyler's Warner Bros. drama starring Bette Davis as Leslie Crosbie, a planter's wife who kills her lover; seven Oscar nominations, Maugham adaptation, PCA-forced ending change.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.film-noir-and-neo-noir-films.yr-1940-1975", "markdown": "# The Letter (1940 film)\n\n**The Letter** is a 1940 American black-and-white drama directed by William Wyler for Warner Bros., starring [Bette Davis](https://www.edgepedia.org/bette-davis) as Leslie Crosbie, the wife of a British rubber planter on the [Malay Peninsula](https://www.edgepedia.org/malay-peninsula) who shoots her lover and claims self-defense until an incriminating letter surfaces. The screenplay by Howard Koch adapts [W. Somerset Maugham](https://www.edgepedia.org/w-somerset-maugham)'s 1927 play, itself drawn from a short story Maugham published in 1925.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER) The film runs 95 minutes and was released on 23 November 1940.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Release | 23 November 1940, Warner Bros. Pictures; 95 minutes, 11 reels, RCA Sound System[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER) |\n| Principal cast | Bette Davis (Leslie Crosbie), Herbert Marshall (Robert Crosbie), James Stephenson (Howard Joyce), Gale Sondergaard (Mrs. Hammond)[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER) |\n| Source | Play by W. Somerset Maugham (London, 24 February 1927), from his 1925 short story[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER) |\n| Academy Awards | Seven nominations: Best Picture, Actress, Supporting Actor, Direction, Editing, Original Score, Black-and-White Cinematography; it won none[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER) • [2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/18603/the-letter) |\n| Censorship change | The PCA rejected the submitted story for adultery and unpunished murder, so the ending was rewritten and Hammond's Chinese mistress became his Eurasian wife[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER) |\n| Opening shot | A two-minute wordless sequence that took an entire day and 33 takes to film[3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/220542/behind-the-camera-the-letter-behind-the-camera-on-the-letter) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nLeslie Crosbie, wife of rubber planter Robert Crosbie ([Herbert Marshall](https://www.edgepedia.org/herbert-marshall)), shoots and kills Jeff Hammond and claims she was defending her honor. Robert sends for family friend and attorney Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), who doubts her story. His clerk Ong Chi Seng offers to sell him a letter Leslie wrote Hammond on the day of his death, asking him to visit her. Confronted, Leslie confesses to the cold-blooded killing but manipulates Joyce into buying the letter back from Hammond's widow, who demands that Leslie personally deliver $10,000. With the evidence gone, Leslie is acquitted. Robert later learns the cost of the letter as he prepares to draw $10,000 from savings for a rubber plantation in Sumatra; Leslie confesses her guilt and her love for Hammond, and he forgives her. Mrs. Hammond and her servant then ambush Leslie at night, and Mrs. Hammond stabs her with a dagger before a Malaysian policeman arrests them both.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER)\n\n### Censorship and the changed ending\n\nAccording to materials in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library, the Production Code Administration rejected the story Warner Bros. first submitted because it contained adultery and unpunished murder. Warner Bros. changed the ending so that Leslie's sins are punished. In Maugham's original play, the wife lives out her life without her husband, and the character [Gale Sondergaard](https://www.edgepedia.org/gale-sondergaard) plays was Hammond's Chinese mistress; the studio changed her to his Eurasian wife to placate the Hays office.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER)\n\n[Cecil Kellaway](https://www.edgepedia.org/cecil-kellaway) is listed in the onscreen credits as Prescott, but his character was apparently cut before release; he appears only in a longshot during a party scene.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER)\n\n## Production\n\nShooting began in May 1940 on the Warner Bros. studio lot, with Hal B. Wallis as executive producer and Robert Lord as associate producer.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER) • [3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/220542/behind-the-camera-the-letter-behind-the-camera-on-the-letter) The first scene Wyler shot was the famous opening: a moonlit rubber plantation, a startled white cockatoo, and Leslie emptying her revolver into Hammond. Wyler insisted on 33 takes of the two-minute shot; producer Hal Wallis later recalled in his autobiography that Bette Davis was exhausted by the last take, and that when Wyler asked whether he liked the result, Wallis told him he had used the first take.[3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/220542/behind-the-camera-the-letter-behind-the-camera-on-the-letter)\n\n**Davis and Wyler clashed once more.** In the climactic scene Leslie tells her husband, \"With all my heart I still love the man I killed.\" Wyler wanted Davis to look her husband in the eye as she delivered the line; Davis felt no woman could say such a thing to her husband's face and walked off the set, something she said she had never done in her career. She returned and played it Wyler's way, though she maintained her approach was better.[3](https://www.tcm.com/articles/220542/behind-the-camera-the-letter-behind-the-camera-on-the-letter)\n\nWyler also favored long takes elsewhere. The prison scene between Leslie and her lawyer runs about eight minutes on a single two-shot, broken only by one reaction shot of Stephenson.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/18603/the-letter) James Stephenson, a British actor Jack Warner had suggested, was cast as the lawyer over the studio's worry that the role was too important for an unknown; his performance earned an Oscar nomination, but he died of a heart attack less than a year later.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/18603/the-letter)\n\n## Style and reception\n\nThe film is often cited for Wyler's visual storytelling. The opening and the later confrontation between Leslie and Mrs. Hammond carry almost no dialogue; the confrontation uses no music, only the sound of wind chimes heightened to menacing effect.[2](https://www.tcm.com/articles/18603/the-letter) Tony Gaudio's cinematography renders the setting in torrid dark images of whirling fans, palm shadows, and pools of moonlight, while [Max Steiner](https://www.edgepedia.org/max-steiner)'s score leans on a two-note \"fate\" theme.[4](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/the-letter-1940/)\n\nCritics have singled out Davis's performance. [Pauline Kael](https://www.edgepedia.org/pauline-kael) wrote that Davis gives \"what is very likely the best study of female sexual hypocrisy in film history,\" helped by Stephenson as the lawyer and Marshall as the husband.[4](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/the-letter-1940/) The film holds a 100% rating on the Tomatometer from 15 reviews listed by Apple TV.[5](https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-letter/umc.cmc.4h1qy7fu0d7gbaavmj1h6xchg)\n\n## Other versions\n\nMaugham's story has been adapted repeatedly. Paramount released a 1929 film version directed by Jean de Limur, starring Jeanne Eagels as Leslie with Herbert Marshall in the role of Hammond, the lover Marshall's 1940 character replaces; in 1931 Paramount released Spanish, German, French, and Italian-language versions. A further adaptation came from Warner Bros. in 1947 as *The Unfaithful*, with [Ann Sheridan](https://www.edgepedia.org/ann-sheridan) and [Lew Ayres](https://www.edgepedia.org/lew-ayres) in the lead roles under Vincent Sherman's direction, and John Erman later helmed a 1982 television version featuring [Lee Remick](https://www.edgepedia.org/lee-remick) and Ronald Pickup. Merle Oberon and Walter Huston starred in a Lux Radio Theatre version in 1938, with further radio adaptations in 1941 and 1944.[1](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER) • [6](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10247-THE-LETTER) • [7](https://www.doctormacro.com/Movie%20Summaries/L/Letter%2C%20The%20%281940%29.htm) Later adaptations include Kira Muratova's 1987 Russian-language film *Change of Fate* and a 2009 Santa Fe Opera production with music by Paul Moravec and libretto by Terry Teachout.[8](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstreams/c70174c8-dc2c-4af7-9eda-5f35fbb75ceb/download)\n\n## References\n\n1. [The Letter (1940), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/5075-THE-LETTER)\n2. [The Letter, TCM article by Margarita Landazuri (2002)](https://www.tcm.com/articles/18603/the-letter)\n3. [Behind the Camera: The Letter, TCM article by Andrea Passafiume (2008)](https://www.tcm.com/articles/220542/behind-the-camera-the-letter-behind-the-camera-on-the-letter)\n4. [The Letter (1940) film notes, Toronto Film Society (2015)](https://torontofilmsociety.com/film-notes/the-letter-1940/)\n5. [The Letter, Apple TV](https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-letter/umc.cmc.4h1qy7fu0d7gbaavmj1h6xchg)\n6. [The Letter (1929), AFI Catalog of Feature Films](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10247-THE-LETTER)\n7. [The Letter (1940) summary, Doctor Macro](https://www.doctormacro.com/Movie%20Summaries/L/Letter%2C%20The%20%281940%29.htm)\n8. [Imperial Propaganda and Literature, Harvard DASH](https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstreams/c70174c8-dc2c-4af7-9eda-5f35fbb75ceb/download)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Film noir and neo-noir films › Released 1940 to 1975*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-letter-1940-film", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/the-letter-1940-film.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"The Letter (1940 film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-letter-1940-film. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[The Letter (1940 film)](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-letter-1940-film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/the-letter-1940-film](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-letter-1940-film). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"The Letter (1940 film)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/the-letter-1940-film. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "The Letter is William Wyler's Warner Bros. drama starring Bette Davis as Leslie Crosbie, a planter's wife who kills her lover; seven Oscar nominations, Maugham adaptation, PCA-forced ending change." }